


Surfacing

by thisprettywren



Series: Gravity Series [2]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Angst, Gen, Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-29
Updated: 2010-12-29
Packaged: 2017-10-14 05:03:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,109
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/145665
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thisprettywren/pseuds/thisprettywren
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He'd gone inside his head and hadn't wanted to come back out again.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Surfacing

_Underwater_ , Sherlock thought, and knew he wasn’t. Knew that wasn’t right. Knew that the list of things that weren’t right was a lot longer than that.

He took a deep, shuddering breath, trying to be dispassionate about the pain that shot through his side at the movement. Kept his eyes closed. _Running water._ Opened them. Took in the scene. Didn’t panic. Absolutely did not panic. His brain felt slow, heavy.

John’s pyjama’d legs and slippered feet, hanging limply over the side of the bathtub. In the flat, then. No shower curtain; steam filling the room, everything coated with damp. He reached his right hand to his head, was mostly quiet about it despite the pain that roared through his shoulder, noted dispassionately that his hand was shaking, that his whole body was shaking, that he was wet. Not just steam; sweat. 

Moriarty. _John._

Moriarty hurt John, took him and cornered them both. _Stupid_. He scrambled forward to the tub.

“John. _John._ ”

No response. John’s face didn’t look like his face; usually it was mobile and expressive, and now it looked more like clay, lumpy clay packed on over something disintegr—

 _Blood_. 

Red blood swirling toward the drain, mixing with the water and making quite interesting patterns, really, it was beautiful, but it was coming out of the back of John’s head and his mouth was filling with water and Sherlock knew this was all very bad. John’s eyes were closed and Sherlock put a hand on his chest to make sure he was breathing—he was—and reached out his left hand to turn off the water and the tap was hot, it _burned_ and his hand was already burned and John was going to be angry about that, and Sherlock gritted his teeth and twisted until the shower finally stopped.

 _The burns in the kitchen_ , he thought, and he’d gone inside his head and hadn’t wanted to come back out again. It was all jumbled and he couldn’t think properly, but he was making tea and burned his hand it was _just like_ at the pool, the same hand even, and he’d known that if it happened again he couldn’t stop it, he wasn’t ready, and _John_ —

(John thought Moriarty was dead, Sherlock let him think that, but he knew and Mycroft knew it wasn’t true and they needed to be _ready_ and he wasn’t ready, not at all, he couldn’t get out of his own head and he couldn’t think properly and it was all so _bloody useless)_

 _—_ and he could feel his fingers in John’s hair and he could feel the impact of John’s skull against the tub and it echoed up his arm and _oh unholy hell_ he’d actually killed him, just like last time but _worse_ , so much worse. _I’ll. Stop. Yours,_ he heard his own voice say in memory, or something like his own voice, and he knew he’d done this and it would be the end of both of them. _Please God let him live_ , he thought on John’s behalf, because Sherlock knew there really wasn’t much to cleverness after all, not when it came to things like this, and if it was the end of John it would be the end of both of them, it had to be, it was so bad when it was just _almost_ before and he couldn’t, just couldn’t.

He had to get John out of the tub, had to try to stop the bleeding from the back of his head. And he wanted to weep because he was so _weak_ and his body wouldn’t obey him properly, his hands trembling and his fingers barely even closing on John’s sodden pyjamas tightly enough to grip and he had one hand under his shoulder and the other under his hip and he pulled, and somehow John’s hips slid up and over the lip of the tub and down again until he was sitting on the floor, head lolling back but at least he was up and something went badly wrong in Sherlock’s right shoulder and he did scream, then.

He looked down, trembling fingers of his left hand reaching carefully up to probe the top of his right arm, and it was all so wrong and the bone wasn’t supposed to be like that and the muscles were clawing agony, his head screeched with it, and those might have been actual tears on his face and not just steam but Sherlock couldn’t be bothered to figure that out, not just then. 

 _You know who’d be useful right now_ , he thought in a sudden flash of mad calm. _John._

John would know what to do, but he’d probably killed John and it served him right to have to do this himself, this was his punishment, to sit here helpless with his body turning on him while John bled into his brain and out his skull and he still couldn’t stop it. 

 _Pain focuses the mind_ , he thought, and didn’t think about that any more because it was all child’s play compared to this, just games, and this wasn’t a game at all. And finally, finally, his brain dredged up something useful, pictures from an anatomy book and the image of a corpse from the morgue, a man who’d been dragged behind a mower and had his arm pulled partway out of joint ( _not all the way out,_ Sherlock thought, and his burned fingers pressed through the pain until he agreed) and in his mind’s eye he was flipping pages of the book, _so much useful information he hadn’t yet catalogued, there’s always something missing_ and then he thought he could see it, the lines of bone glowing bright beneath the skin, and _oh bugger it_ he bent his right arm and braced it against the wall and twisted with his left hand and leaned in with his body and the world went grey and yellow with pain for a bit but then everything popped back into place and his arm, at least, was his again. 

John’s head was still lolling back and there was red blood, far too bright now that the shower was off, running into the tub and Mrs. Hudson would fuss when she got back from wherever she’d gone this week, because Sherlock was sure he wasn’t actually capable of cleaning up John’s blood, not John’s of all people’s.

Sherlock’s own blood was singing in his ears and the world was going a bit grey around the edges of his vision. He could feel the echoes of the fight with John in his muscles, of the fever, of the fall and the months before that of exhaustion and hunger and it was too much, really, but if it was _too much_ then he’d just have to be _too much_ too, and he was good at that part, he’d been practicing. He’d call, summon help, that bit was easy, and he made his way over to the door and used the knob to pull himself upright, turned it, and nothing happened.

 _John, you_ idiot _,_ he thought sharply. No key in the lock, but it was locked and they were both in here and Sherlock could remember enough of how that had happened to know John must have taken the key, so it must still be in the bathroom somewhere. Sherlock regarded his fingers shaking on the knob, almost dispassionately, sank back to the floor. 

Thought, _I could just break it down_. He glanced at his shoulder, and felt pain like a sickness crawl over him at the thought. _Kick it, then._ He did kick it, turning his body to brace his back against the sink, but nothing happened. _Weak. Expected._

 _He would have wanted to keep control of it_ , he thought, _so on his person, but he’s not devious, no need. Pockets._

Sherlock watched as a trembling, pale hand with long fingers reached out and searched first one, then the other, pocket of John’s pyjamas. It didn’t feel like his hand, which was just as well because it also didn’t turn up anything useful. He looked at his other hand, which was wrapped in bandages that were damp and falling apart, gummy, hindering. He ripped them off in disgust and paused a moment to stare in fascination at the red, blistered swath overlaying the scarred skin beneath. _At least that one looks like mine_ , he thought, disgusted, but it didn’t turn up a key, either.

He tried calling John’s name, because really his friend would be a useful person to have around just now, the _most_ useful person Sherlock could think of (John always was the most useful person Sherlock could think of), but he only had himself to blame for the fact that John wasn’t there. His chest still moved, which was good, but the towels he had placed against the back of his head were worse than useless in this position. Sherlock pulled John’s quiet body forward until he was lying on the tile, fully horizontal, head pillowed on the last clean towel. His shoulder protested but, thankfully, the humerus stayed in place, and he still wasn’t crying, not really, but he couldn’t seem to breathe properly.

Sherlock was starting to shiver. He really wasn’t quite well enough for this.

“I’m really not quite well enough for this,” he admitted quietly to his doctor, who would have agreed.

He turned his head back to the tub, the floor of it red with John’s blood. Normally blood didn’t bother him, but this was _John’s_ , and he could still feel his fingers laced in his friend’s hair. But there, by the drain, coated and dark, his quick eyes ( _not quick enough, never quick enough when it counts_ ) spotted the key.

He reached out with the burned left hand, the one that was indisputably _his_ , grasped the key that was coated in John’s blood, and it was warm and surprisingly heavy in his hand—

(he was back in the pool, underwater, the chlorine stinging the burns along his left side, wanted to take a breath because the air had been forced out of him by the impact of John’s body, forced himself to open his eyes instead, and _John’s body_ there it was, floating heavily toward the bottom in a cloud of pinkish water and it was blood from John’s own head, he must have hit it on the tile, and Sherlock thought _you can’t call this one A Study in Pink too, because you won’t see how much pink there was_ and made his way toward him. John’s eyes were open but they didn’t seem to see much, too like a dead man’s, his whole face drained of colour and horrible, and Sherlock grabbed him around the waist and pulled him to the far side of the pool, just in case, his own lungs burning and then, finally, their heads broke the surface and they were both gasping and Sherlock was pulling John onto the tile and this side of the building was intact enough, at least, that Lestrade and Donovan would have something to _enter_ , and they sat on the tiles and John closed his eyes and Sherlock watched the pool chairs burn and melt like the skin on his arm and waited and soon there were sirens and lights and they both woke up in hospital.)

Sherlock blinked. He’d tried to delete that, he remembered now, because of John’s face, because he didn’t want to remember that he swam through a cloud of his friend’s blood and couldn’t think of anything but the colour, because it had all been too mundane for someone like John, to save him in an explosion and then drown peacefully, without a struggle. _He would have wanted to struggle_ , but he’d hit his head and he couldn’t. It was too absurd to die in a pool after all that time in the sand and there was no way to make sense of it so it was better to just forget. 

—and Sherlock looked at the key in his fingers and thought, _I knew I was right to trust you_ , and soon the door was open and what was left of the steam was spilling into the hall.

Sherlock made his unsteady way across to his room where his new mobile sat on the bedside table. He’d decided already, on the way from the bathroom, who he would call, and in what order. 

First, Lestrade. It was either very late or very early, but the detective inspector came awake on hearing the tone in Sherlock’s voice and promised to be there within a few minutes. Sherlock almost smiled as he hung up the phone, because he didn’t deserve such loyalty, but John did and that made it okay.

The next call was to Mycroft. Mycroft, who answered immediately and sounded wide-awake, despite the hour: “Sherlock.”

“Mycroft,” Sherlock answered, and tried to keep the weariness out of his voice, although he could see from the phone that John had called him, suspected his brother had been to visit him the previous day. “End it.”

“If you’re sure,” Mycroft answered, delicately. “I’ve been… saving him for you.”

Sherlock shook his head. “No.” He glanced back across the hall to the bathroom, where most of John’s prostrate form was visible. “It’s enough. Just. End it.”

Three days before, Moriarty had finally made a mistake, fallen into the hands of Mycroft’s network. Mycroft had been keeping him somewhere outside London; he called to tell Sherlock as soon as Moriarty regained consciousness, knowing that his brother wanted some time to have his revenge for what had happened. Sherlock had received the news impassively (concealing his excitement from his brother, _the things he would do, how he’d make that bastard pay,_ knowing that if he made Moriarty suffer he’d have to make himself suffer too, _John would have to do it,_ John the only blameless one in all this) then gone in to John’s room, just to watch for a moment, wanting to assure himself that John was still there, looking for guidance. Felt the familiar dread closing over him, the feeling of lost control. Asked for John’s help when he should have been the one providing it, when John had done so much already.

 _Maybe this is the result that matters,_ he thought, _letting go, moving forward_. Ensuring that John had a future.

“Just kill him,” Sherlock said finally. “Kill him and be done with it. It isn’t worth. Well. There’s a risk, while he lives.”

“Yes,” Mycroft said thoughtfully, and Sherlock wondered just what he and John had discussed. “I do see. Very well, then. I’ll be sure to snap a photo for you, at the very least.”

Sherlock’s eyes slid to the photos of his own body, still pinned to the wall of his room. He made a noncommittal noise into the phone. “Careless to leave evidence, Mycroft, how unlike you,” and hung up.

His clothes were still wet and cooling rapidly—his temperature was coming down, but not fast enough—and he reeked of fever and adrenaline and blood. Still too damaged and he wouldn’t undo all John’s work like this. The prospect of needing Lestrade’s help to undress was too much, it really was, and he summoned his last vestiges of energy and found some dry pyjamas of his own. 

Under his clothing everything was in ruins, skin and bandages both in tatters. At least one set of stitches had torn. His shoulder didn’t want to flex and he briefly considered just tearing his shirt off, but didn’t think he had the strength for it and would have to raise that arm to get the new one on, in any case, so he just gritted his teeth and managed it in the end. He’d deal with it, or have John deal with it, once John was all right. If John wasn’t all right after all it wouldn’t matter, so no point making a fuss. 

John was still breathing, on the bathroom floor. His face was pale and the towel under his head was red, which was wrong, and the tub was already starting to dry a dark, disturbing colour. Sherlock sat gingerly on the toilet and tried to remember what his face normally felt like, how to compose it into an expression that would reassure Lestrade and allow them to focus on John, and then there was the sound of running feet on the stairs and the detective inspector was standing in the hall, staring, and Sherlock was too relieved to let himself begin to express it, so what he said instead was, “It took you long enough. If this had been a real emergency, we’d be—“

Lestrade was at John’s side, kneeling, carefully lifting his head to inspect the wound, calmly competent. Ignoring Sherlock, which was just as well. 

They got John dry, Sherlock busying himself with picking out dry clothing for his flatmate to disguise the shaking of his limbs, the weakness that ran through him; he let Lestrade be the one to lift John and carry him to the sofa, though, which earned him a sharp look from the detective inspector, _he knew_ , but Sherlock didn’t care, not really, as long as they didn’t talk about it, as long as they could stay focused on John. John, who was more like Lestrade than he was like Sherlock, calm and competent, the kind of man who would rouse himself in the middle of the night, no questions asked, and consider it duty. Maybe not so clever but not so stupid as all that, and anyway it seemed there was a good deal more to things than just being clever all the time, because sometimes all cleverness gets you is the knowledge that you tried to murder your best friend and a willingness to leave him open to worse, much worse. 

Lestrade wanted to call an ambulance, but Sherlock wouldn’t let him. If John were dying, he’d want to do it at home ( _if he couldn’t do it on bloody sand halfway ‘round the globe_ ) and anyway, Sherlock was pretty sure this was a test, and he’d always been good at tests. 

So Lestrade made tea, and they drank it, and made breakfast, and they ate it, and Mycroft sent a text from an anonymous phone with the simple message **it’s done _,_** unsigned and all lower-case just like that, and maybe he’d hurt John and maybe he would again but at least this time he was saving him, too, and as early morning became mid-morning Lestrade tried to convince Sherlock to sleep for a bit, and John opened his eyes.


End file.
